Month: September 2015

I’ve been teaching a 4 week yoga/poetry series at The Yoga Lodge in Pollock Pines the last couple of weeks. The format of the class is that we explore a topic through the lens of both a yoga and writing practice and have the opportunity to integrate both disciplines into our lives. Yesterday’s class we explored the topic of commitment. In both yoga and writing we must commit ourselves to consistent practice in order to see the benefits appear in our daily lives. So today, I invite you to explore this topic with the following writing prompt:
“Write a poem from the perspective of Commitment”

Here’s today’s piece. The subject matter really struck a chord with me as I identify with being overly sexualized at an early age. I would love any feedback, so please leave some comments, thoughts, opinions below 🙂
Open letter to Kylie Jenner:

Kylie

When the boys come, it will be unexpected.

You will go to bed a girl and wake up as meat

For them to sink their teeth into.

You will call this new ability power.

Power to be the thing they slaughter.

You will learn how to wield the feeling of

Eyes on your body

Like a shield

How to wear your blood

On your lips

And call it contouring

This is what girls do when they grow

When they live in the places that market their sexuality to the highest bidder

We learn early this ability to sell ourselves

To trade sex appeal for access

And tell ourselves that the men who want to touch us

Are the prisoners.

We will be told the only card we have to play

Is our desirability

As jailbait

But no one will sit behind bars for us

They won’t check ID’s at the door.

Kylie

The responsibility will be placed on your shoulders

Stacked like books on top of your head

They’ve taught you to walk like lady

But a girl only becomes a woman when men tell her she is fuckable

That her curves overlook her age

And you will be told to be grateful for the opportunity to have yourself dissected

I’ve got about 10 new poem ideas, but whenever New Poem Monday rolls along, I end up writing something that flows naturally out of me and expresses exactly how I feel in that moment. I love the feeling of the natural “flow” of writing, so here is today’s poem. I plan on undertaking actually working on writing a more structured performance piece next week.

I’m taking a break from new poem Monday this week. I spent the weekend at Burning Man and am currently relaxing and decompressing at a hot springs on route home for a few days in order to reset my mind from all of the sensory overload it endured at the festival. See you all next week!

I wasn’t a cutter
Still I knew how to show others
I bled
Self harm can be a dance
You do with yourself
Stumbling on purpose
Stepping on your own feet
Denying what you need
Only wanting to show the world
How much you hurt
As gracefully
As possible.
When the lovers wouldn’t hit me
I used the wall to replace their fists
When friends loved me
I gave them them back mangled hearts pooling in puddles on their doorsteps
And wiped my bloody feet on their clean white carpets
I don’t have scars to show others
Just a history of ways I am ugly
Every year I’m finding new methods to kill myself as slowly as possible
To make this dance look more hopscotch or jump rope
Like I am rhythmically aware of what I am doing to myself
How I stop eating for months
Just to get someone to notice me
How I pull at my hair until clumps
Fall out
Just to feel anything
But all I do is step on my toes
And spin and spin
Hoping
Someone will catch me.